Category Archives: Intellectual Property

On the Deleting of Academia.edu and Other Sundry Affairs

Once again with feeling, a point that I think cannot be made often enough. Social media created and operated by a for-profit company, no matter what it says when it starts off about the rights of content creators, will inevitably … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 2 Comments

History 82 Fall 2014 Syllabus

Here’s the current version of the syllabus for my upcoming fall class on the history of digital media. Really excited to be teaching this. ——————— History 82 Histories of Digital Media Fall 2014 Professor Burke This course is an overly … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Humanities, Games and Gaming, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property, Popular Culture, Swarthmore | 4 Comments

Historians Don’t Have to Live in the Past

In what way is the American Historical Association’s notion of a six-year embargo on digital open-access distribution of dissertations even remotely sustainable in the current publishing and media environment surrounding academia? On one side, you have disciplinary associations like the … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property, Production of History | 19 Comments

“Our Rate Even for Original, Reported Stories is $100″

About two years after I’d started blogging, a journalist friend of mine gently needled me about what I was doing. “You’re going to put us all out of business if you keep giving away all that stuff for free,” he … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 8 Comments

The State of the Art III: Facebook (and 500px and Flickr) as a Window Into Social Media

III. The Business Model as Belief and Reality Why is Facebook such a repeatedly bad actor in its relationship to its users, constantly testing and probing for ways to quietly or secretly breach the privacy constraints that most of its … Continue reading

Posted in Cleaning Out the Augean Stables, Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 3 Comments

Now

I don’t think there’s much more to say about Aaron Swartz. I didn’t know him personally but like many others I am a beneficiary of the work he did. And I have agreed for much of my life as an … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 6 Comments

Apres Le Perturbation

There are three ways to look at what’s happening right now to the economic and social viability of the professions and various kinds of cultural work. One is silly, one is depressing and one is ambiguous. Guess which I prefer? … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 4 Comments

Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads

(Army of Darkness reference for the uninitiated.) I hereby volunteer: the next pundit who talks about how MOOCs are going to save higher education some big bucks needs to meet me for drinks at the establishment of his or her … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 15 Comments

UnConference or MutateConference?

This morning I was drawn to a post by Mitch Joel claiming that the “unconference movement” is dead. I hadn’t encountered Joel’s blog before, so I hope I’m not reading this piece out of the context of his usual commentary. … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 5 Comments

There Is Nothing You Possess That Power Cannot Take Away

…to paraphrase what Belloq says to Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The problem with a rights-based liberalism is precisely that it is not and never can be the end of history, that it is never secure or … Continue reading

Posted in Intellectual Property, Politics | 4 Comments